USBLogView has been designed to fill the gap. The new portable software monitors plug-in and unplug events of external USB devices for as long as it runs on the system.

Plug and unplug events are recorded along with other information about each particular event. This includes the date and time the event took place, the device name, description and type of device.

The program furthermore highlights drive letters, serial numbers and other information about each external USB device that got connected or disconnected while the application was running in the background.

If you run the program all the time you get a detailed list of all connections to the PC the software is running on. It needs to be noted that this is not a 100% safe way of finding out. Users with access to the PC could close the program and restart it to avoid detection. They would however need to either look for monitoring software or know that it is running to do so.

USBLogView comes with the usual options Nir Sofer adds to his software programs. It is possible to export connection data, create a HTML report, print data or copy and paste it directly.

The software is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system. Interested users can download it from the developer website.

You sometimes may want to prevent that other people connect USB devices to your PC, for instance to avoid that they download data from the PC to external drives. Or, you might want to prevent users from using the connected USB printer whenever you are not on your computer.

While you could do that with Registry hacks and other means, it is usually a lot easier to use a program like USB Manager for that job. Keep in mind that disabling USB devices or device types is not a 100% protection against data theft, copying or printing of data.

USB Manager displays the four USB device types that it supports in its interface on program start. All four of them, that is storage devices, usb printers, USB audio devices and USB scanners, are enabled by default indicated by the green checkmark next to each symbol.

You can disable a specific device type, e.g. printers, with a click on the device icon in the program interface. You can alternatively use the program’s system tray icon to enable or disable device types.

All it takes is a few clicks to disable or enable USB devices on the system. It is furthermore possible to set a program access password in the options to avoid that others enable devices again that you have disabled.

The options are also the place to configure hotkeys, hide the system tray icon or configure the application to autostart with the Windows operating system.

USB Manager serves a specific purpose. Depending on the USB devices, you may notice that some are not disabled even though they should be. This was for instance the case with my Logitech G930 wireless headset which was not disabled when I disabled USB Audio using the software.

Windows users who would like to give it a try can download the software from the developer website. A commercial server client is available that can be used to control USB devices on remote computer systems.

Please note that the program offers to install an optional software package during installation. Make sure you click cancel here if you do not want to install several unrelated programs that may also make changes to your browser’s default search engine and homepage.

Update: The audio headset has been disabled correctly after a reboot. Please also note that you need to run the program with elevated rights.

Update 2: The Makesoft website is returning a 404 not found error currently.It is not clear if technical difficulties are responsible, or if it has been abandoned. We have uploaded the latest version of USB Manager to our servers. Click on the following link to download it: USB Manager (3)

The problem here is that it is very likely that someone else will eventually spot the drive or key and take it with them.

Free USB Guard is a program that checks for connected USB devices on system power changes. If devices are found, the user will be notified to avoid the aforementioned scenarios. The application is a portable software. Just unpack it, for instance on the USB drive or stick to run it from there whenever you are working on systems that are not your own.

Whenever you change a power state, for instance by selecting to shut down or log off, you are reminded by the program that USB devices are still connected to the system.

The program for the most part sits quietly in the Windows system tray. It displays a list of all USB drives that it currently monitors. This list is automatically updated whenever a new device is connected to the PC that is monitored by the application.

The program will autostart with Windows unless you uncheck the options in the program’s right-click context menu. Free USB Guard can monitor external hard drives as well. A list of available drives is displayed, including internal drives, which can be added to the program’s monitoring. You basically get the same warning message if you change the power state then.

Free USB Guard is not the only program that can do that. In How To Protect USB Sticks And The Data On Them I mentioned the program USB Stick Watcher which basically can do the same. The program comes with additional functionality, including sound alerts.

Free USB Guard is available for download at the developer website. The program is compatible with all recent 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system.

This is fantastic news for everybody and everything (except perhaps the compact disc of course).  The Apple thumb drive will cost $69 but at least means that customers will be able to buy a physical copy of the operating system.

So, as I know you’re thinking this, why if it’s more than twice the price of the OS is this such wonderful news?  We’ll we’ll ignore the price as this will come down in time and eventually we’ll find the things made or cardboard and bundled with cereal packets.  This is exactly why its so cool.  Eventually we’ll see them made of cardboard and bundled in cereal packets!

The USB pen drive has finally come of age with this news and I’m absolutely delighted that Apple have announced it.  It doesn’t matter that they won’t sell many and that it will be mostly tech enthusiasts and collectors that buy them.  What is important is that as Apple are doing this it will all of a sudden become trendy and everybody will want to do it.  This can only drive down the price of USB pen drives and greatly drive down the overall cost of storage on them.

It also means we’ll see ever more interesting form factors for the devices and pretty soon you’ll be buying software, movies and albums like this everywhere.  What’s more it’s a shot in the arm for all those retail industries to rely on having a physical item to sell.  With everything moving into the cloud it’s been looking like those without Internet access might get shut out completely.  Now Apple is helping to make certain they won’t.

So, congratulations again to Apple, I think it’s a marvelous idea and long live the pen drive.  Now, where’s that box of cornflakes..?

The main function of the host is to act as a bus master which controls the data input and output channels and decide its use at varied times. The host also acts as the powered bus to provide power. In the computer world the laptop or the desktop acts as the host which performs as the bus master as well as providing power to the bus. While the other accessories such as the mouse, printer, webcam etc. act as the USB devices. Similarly in the smart phones the phone device acts as the host whereas its accessories act as the USB devices. But since very few Android powered devices support host mode to successfully connect the accessories as the USB devices, the Android developers turned the normal relationship on its head. Instead of using the phone or tablets as hosts, they act as USB Devices and the accessories acts as the USB Host. This means that the accessories act as the bus master and a powered bus.

The Open Accessory will consist of a USB host and a system to provide power to the Android Device such as a phone or tablet. Once the accessory is connected to the device the device will identify itself on the basis of its VID/PID (significant IDs which are unique to the Device model and manufacturer). Once the device is detected the accessory asks the device to switch to accessory mode by sending a series of control transactions to the device. While switching to accessory mode the device will reappear with the new VID/PID corresponding to the accessory mode. The above protocol will help the device to start in the accessory mode after the appropriate application is initiated. If the specific application is not found, the protocol will suggest a relevant URL for the application.

How to start Android device in accessory mode?

Step 1: Send a 51 control (“get protocol”) request to detect if the device supports Android Accessory Protocol. If the device supports the protocol, a non-zero number is returned. This number represents the version of the protocol. The following are the characteristics of the request control.

Step 2: After the appropriate protocol version is returned by the device, send a string information to the device, this information will select the appropriate application for the accessory attached, if the application is not found in the device it will suggest the user with a URL. The characteristics of this request are as follows:

The following string IDs are supported with maximum size of 256 bytes for each string.

Step 3: Once the application has been chosen, send the request to start device in accessory mode. This request is a control request on endpoint 0 having characteristics as follows:

After the final control request has been sent, the device will reappear in the accessory mode and the accessory will be able to identify the device and establish communication with the device. Thus the Android seems to have created a pathway for configuring the accessories with the devices.

Modern USB devices on the other hand do not ship with write protection switches anymore, which means that other solutions need to be discovered that work equally well.

What if you’d fill the storage on the USB device to the brim? That’s what USB Dummy Protect does. The idea is simple. You create a fake file that takes up all free space on the device. With no space left on the drive, viruses cannot write on it which means that they are blocked and cannot replicate.

The software is fully portable and needs to be placed on the USB device. You can run the program on any computer system that runs the Windows operating system.

USB Dummy Protect detects the free size on the device directly after it has been started, and begins to write a dummy file of the same size to the drive. The filename is always dummy.file.

If you need space to store files on the drive, you need to remove the dummy file first, copy or move the new files to the drive, and run USB Dummy Protect again to fill the remaining free space again with a dummy file.

The protection is basic, and advanced viruses may be able to circumvent it, for instance by deleting files on the stick to free up space before writing to the stick.

Still, USB Dummy Protect is relatively comfortable to use, especially since it is always located on the USB drive so that it can be used to write a new file whenever that is necessary.

The software worked fine on a 64-bit Windows 7 Pro test system. The developer notes that it only works on USB devices of up to 4 Gigabytes if they use the FAT file system.

You can download USB Dummy Protect from the project homepage at Google Code.

It is sometimes in the best interest of companies, organizations and individuals to protect the data on their computer from being copied this way.

Microsoft has added options to the Windows operating system (more precisely to Windows XP and newer operating systems) to write protect all USB devices that are connected to it. This indicates that it may not always be possible to protect the computer this way, for instance if data needs to be written to USB devices regularly.

Write Protection adds another layer of defense to the computer. The system is not fool proof on its own, as it is still possible to copy data, for instance by uploading it to the Internet or a network connection.

Write Protecting USB Devices

You can enable or disable write protection of all USB devices that are connected to the Windows operating system. Both settings are configured in the Windows Registry. Here is how this is done.

Open the Windows Registry editor with the shortcut Windows-r, enter regedit into the form and press the return key on the keyboard.

Navigate to the following Registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies

Please note that you may need to create the key StorageDevicePolicies if it does not exist. Select the key afterwards and right-click into the right window. Select New > Dword (32-bit) Value from the context menu and name the entry WriteProtect.

Double-click the new entry afterwards and change the value from 0 to 1. A value of 1 disables writing to all connected USB devices. If you want to enable writing again you need to change the value of the key to 0.

The new setting takes effect immediately. Every user who tries to copy data to USB devices with write protection enabled receives the following notification window.

It reads

Copy File
The disk is write-protected
Remove the write-protection or use another disk.

I have created two Registry files to enable or disable write protection. You can download a zip file that contains both files here: write protect

This way you can disable write protection with a click on a file, and enable it again when you have copied files to the USB device.

It could become a problem if a USB hub is connected to the port that is powering multiple devices as it could mean that this exceeds the maximum power that can be supplied by the port. This could result in connection problems and even data loss.

A good start is to find out how much power the USB devices need before connecting them together to an USB hub. The free portable software USBDeview by Nirsoft can do that. Just download the software, unpack it and start it on the target computer system.

Power is one of the information provided by the application. You need to scroll a bit until you find the column as it is located near the end.

You need to click on the Power column title to sort the devices. Not every device requires power and this brings those that do to the top of the list. It is not always that easy to identify devices. The description and drive letter usually help out here. You can also try and disconnect devices and refresh the listing to identify it by looking at which device is missing from the listing after the disconnection.

Did you ever run into troubles running multiple USB devices on one USB port?

Under the agreement, all new phones announced from today for sale in the EU will have a standard micro-USB socket for charging the device.

The companies who have signed up to the measure, which is intended to reduce the number of chargers sold and discarded in Europe include Apple, Nokia, Qualcomm, HTC, RIM, LG, Motorola and Samsung.

It will be interesting to see how this impacts on Apple’s next iPhone as these phones have always carried proprietary hardware interfaces.  Will the next iPhone switch entirely to micro-USB, will it have a micro-USB socket alongside the standard iPhone connector and will any change only affect handsets sold in the EU?

The move was initialised a year ago by the EU to try to reduce the overall carbon footprint and the amount of waste produced by the electronics industry and very quickly all the major manufacturers signed up.  It means that within a year or two mobile phone companies will begin to sell phones without chargers, instead expecting consumers to either buy one separately or use the existing charger that came with their previous handset.

Some manufacturers including HTC have already been using micro-USB sockets for charging their handsets for a couple of years, indeed I’m now on my second HTC phone with such a socket and charger.

How this is taken by consumers who may resent having to buy a separate charger, or who may went to sell or give away their old phone and charger remains to be seen.  The move is being broadly welcomed by governments across Europe however.

Users should open the settings of the program first to configure it according to their needs. Media Drives is one of the categories that users should pay attention to. All drive letters are listed here, and it is possible to configure settings for each letter individually.

Available flags are skip, to never backup files on that drive or volume, force to backup data regardless of drive type and auto which will copy and backup data from connected removable devices only. The program adheres to copy parameters in general settings. The check interval for removable media, the check interval after a successful copy operation and the maximum number of simultaneous copy operations can be defined here.

But those generic options are not the only ones available to backup data from connected removable devices. Profiles are available to configure the program’s behavior for one specific device. Here it is possible to configure the target directory for the data of that drive, the copy speed, whether files should be ignored and how modified files should be handled.

The program can be configured to run on Windows startup to catch and backup data from all connected removable devices automatically.

USB Flash Copy is a handy tool for users who need to backup data from removable media, which includes memory cards, on a regular basis. The portable software is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system.

The hard disk, which you can see in the image below, follows National Geographic’s external hard disk containing their own back catalogue and it’s certainly a very valuable asset to bundle with the drive given how much back copies of such a cult-magazine can sell for.

The question does need to be asked though are the same people who would like to have electronic copies of all the back issues of Playboy the same people who would happily carry around a Playboy hard disk to their friends, family or even a work premises?

There’s also the issue of price.  Those magazines don’t come completely free as the drive will set you back $300 (£190).

However, for the uninitiated, here is the lowdown: USB stands for Universal Serial Bus and cutting through all the technical stuff, all you need to know is that it is a type of technology that enables data transfer from one device to another which is equipped with a USB port. The USB port is the place where a USB device is inserted. It is by inserting a USB device that data is transferred. The most popular form of USB device is the USB flash drive, more commonly called simply a flash drive, or a pen drive. Flash drives are generally sold with different storage capacities, such as 1 GB, 2 GB, 4GB, 8 GB etc. For a short trip, data that can be fitted on a 4 GB flash drive should suffice, as it amounts to around 1000 songs, 3 to 4 movies, or a couple of games. For extra storage, one always has the option of external hard disks, but these come in much larger capacities such as 120 GB, 250 GB, etc. and are a bit expensive as well, so a normal flash drive serves the purpose and is more feasible.

Internet Cafe Considerations

While traveling, one cannot be assured of always having a personal computer. Though a few high end hotels provide personal laptops to guests, not everyone can afford to stay at such hotels. If you don’t have access to a personal computer, you have no choice but to go to a cyber cafe, or a public internet center where you use a computer for internet for a pre-paid price usually fixed per hour. Browsing at an internet cafe brings a mixture of many things that need to be considered. First, the computers at such centers are shared, and thus you never know which computer has some kind of malicious software installed on it. Malicious software may vary from key logging programs that track your keystrokes and send the information to the planter of the program, to computer viruses that will affect your flash drive causing the loss of data. This is one area where proper caution needs to be exercised or else you can kiss your flash drive, and most important of all, the data that is inside, goodbye.

Precautions

Most of the time, just taking simple precautions will help preserve your valuable data and protect it from getting lost or being misused. The two most common ways by which data is lost are by the tracking of your activity by malicious programs, and peeping toms behind your back, who are always on the prowl with hopes of getting someone’s password, or getting a hint of what you are doing. Most internet centers have computers in a row, and privacy is not ensured to a great extent. Though the incidents of people actually peeping at your screen are a rare happening, it does happen, and it’s always better to be safe than sorry.

Also, as the computer is used by some random person after you, it is always better to keep the following in mind while using a computer at a public internet center. First, always log out of anything that the machine is logged in. This does not mean just clicking on the “log out” button and leaving. You must double check that you have logged out successfully. This simple yet very important step will help a lot to protect you. Also, many browsers offer an option to save the username and password data, be sure to uncheck all such options before logging in, as you do not want any other person to be able to access your information. Second, never leave your computer unsupervised for even a single minute.

If you have to leave, be sure to log out of everything and close all browser windows. Your leaving the computer unsupervised may result in strangers accessing your private documents and files, which you don’t want to happen. The third thing to remember is to clear all history and temporary files and downloaded files when you are through and before you leave. These can be removed by just checking out options of most browsers. The fourth thing to do is to make sure that online financial transactions are avoided at public computers. Because you will have to enter highly confidential data such as credit card number, it is not recommended to use a public computer for these activities. By following these simple precautions you will help ensure you have a safe browsing experience.

Protecting The Flash Drive

Now moving on to how to protect your flash drive, it mostly involves a basic step: password-protect your USB flash drive. Most people while traveling tend to insert their flash drives into every computer they use, thus increasing the chance of their flash drive getting infected by a high degree. The infection can be due to a virus or malicious software installed by a person wishing to access your private files. Also, if your flash drive gets stolen or lost, protecting it with a password will prevent others from getting access to your files easily. Protecting your flash drive with a password is a simple task. There are many free software programs over the internet that give you detailed instructions on how to protect your USB flash drive. These can be found by doing a simple search on any search engine. This easy step is a must in today’s highly dangerous online world and one cannot risk losing even a bit of one’s personal and sensitive data. Do it now. Password-protect your USB drives, use the above precautions, and have a happy and safe travel knowing that you are keeping your data secure.

A program like USB Waecher, which is German and means USB Guardian, can protect the computer from these attacks. The program uses a whitelist to determine if an USB device may connect to the PC. Devices that are not in the whitelist are not permitted to establish the connection unless they are whitelisted by a system administrator.

Part of the information displayed are in German, with no option to change the interface language. It is however not difficulty to use the program even without understanding German. The program makes use of the Microsoft Management Console to administrate the USB devices.

The most important menu on the left side is Erlaubte Geräte, which means allowed devices. This lists all USB devices that are permitted to connect to the PC so that they can be used. All devices that are connected during installation are automatically added to the whitelist.

It is possible to remove devices from that list by right-clicking on an USB device and selecting Delete from the context menu.

New USB devices are added to the whitelist by clicking on the + icon in the toolbar of the application, or by right-clicking on Erlaubte Geräte and selecting Gerät hinzufügen (which means add device). This displays a wizard which is completely in German. Not a big problem though as you need to click on Weiter (next) in the first screen to select the USB device that needs to be added to the whitelist on the second.

Just select the device or devices and click Weiter once again. Click Fertig stellen (finalize) on the last screen of the wizard to add the device to the whitelist.

Download and compatibility

USB Waechter is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Microsoft Windows 7, XP, Vista and the server products Server 2003, Server 2008 and Server 2008 R2. The program can be downloaded directly from the developer website.

But USB devices introduce several security risks that computer users did not have to cope with since the demise of the floppy disk. Programs like USB Dumper can for instance copy all contents of a connected USB-stick directly to the host computer’s storage devices without the USB-stick owner ever knowing that this happened.

But losing confidential data is not the only risk. USB devices can also be targeted by malicious software which use the USB-stick as a host to infect other computer systems it gets connected to.

This article takes a look at some of the options that USB-stick owners have to protect their sticks from those dangers.

Protecting the data on the stick

Data on USB devices can be read by any computer user on any system by default. The data is not protected and all it takes is to connect the stick to access the data on it. This alone can be a problem if the stick is lost or stolen.

The only reasonable option is to protect the confidential data on the stick by encrypting it. We have seen other tips in the past that suggested to use the NTFS file system to protect the data from third parties. That tip might work if the third party is using a Windows NT based system, it fails if they are not.

Encryption software like True-Crypt, USB Safeguard, Bitlocker or AxCrypt can be used to protect the data on the stick. It is often not necessary to encrypt the whole stick. True-Crypt can for instance be used to encrypt part of the space on an USB-stick. It creates an encrypted container on the disk. Data stored in that container becomes only accessible if the right master password is provided.

The disadvantage of True-Crypt is that the encryption software is needed to decrypt the container. AxCrypt on the other hand creates self-extracting encrypted files. This is handy for single files that need to be protected but not a viable option if dozens or hundreds of files need to be protected.

True-Crypt can be installed in traveler mode on the USB stick. Admin rights are still needed to execute the program on other systems though.

All reviewed options until now have been software based. An alternative to that are secure USB devices that use build-in security to protect the stick and data.

All popular manufacturers from Kingston to Corsair offer secure USB devices. The multitude of different security mechanisms and options makes the field quite hard to overlook.

Devices differ in encryption algorithms used, their encryption strength and handling. Some require hardware based authentication on keypads while others are software based solutions that might not be compatible with all operating systems.

Ironkey is a notable exception as it is compatible with Windows, Linux and Mac operating systems. Encryption and decryption is hardware based. The price is however on the upper end of the pricing scale for secure storage devices. The IronKey personal and basic sticks for instance retail for $79 with 1 Gigabyte of storage. Corsair’s Padlock offers 8 Gigabytes for $55.

Both hardware and software based solutions to secure an USB-stick have their advantages and disadvantages. Software based security comes with no additional costs while hardware based devices are packed with additional features that might or might not be needed by the user.

Hardware based solutions are not necessarily more secure than their software counterparts though. It has happened in the past that manufacturers had to recall their products after a flaw had been detected that could be exploited to gain access to the data on the devices.

Securing data with any of the above solutions ensures that data cannot fall into the wrong hands if the device is stolen or if its lost.

Misc Helpful Programs

Another problem that users face from time to time is to forget to disconnect their USB stick from a computer. The data might be protected with encryption but losing the stick might still mean that a day’s work is lost as well.

USB Stick Watcher is a small background application for Windows that will notify the user in regular intervals that the USB stick is still plugged into the computer. It will furthermore display the notifications on shutdown or logoff.

usb stick watcher

USB Stick Watcher is a useful utility for people, who transfer their data (documents, music and more) across different computers. This will display recurring reminder if your pen drive is still plugged in PC. Also, USB Stick Watcher will show warning message every time when you try to turn PC off, or log off without unplugging your pen drive. USB Stick Watcher will ensure that you never leave your USB Stick plugged in to a computer!

An alternative to this software based solution is to put the usb stick on the same keychain as the car / home keys. People will usually pay more attention to their keys than the USB stick they are working with.

USB Write Protector is another interesting free software program. The write protection of USB devices can be enabled with this software. It only works on Windows PCs but is a small portable program that fits perfectly on USB devices of any site.

usb write protection

Thumbscrew is an alternative to USB Write Protector. It provides access to the same functionality.

Thumbscrew has a few limitations:

1. I can’t guarantee it’s 100% forensically sound. Buy a proven USB hardware write blocker if you want to be sure.

2. USB mass storage devices that are already mounted as writeable will stay writeable until they are removed and reinserted. The same applies if you turn off read only protection while a USB mass storage device is active, it will become writable and stay that way until removed and reinserted.

USB devices with hardware write protection switches add an extra layer of security. All software based solutions need to be executed on the host system before they become active which is a problem if malicious software is already active on the host system. Hardware based write protection ensures that no data is written on the USB stick for as long as the protection is in place. Putting an antivirus solution on the USB stick could for instance be used to scan the host system to ensure it is clean before disabling the write protection on the USB stick.

Are you using USB sticks regularly? Let us know how you protect your sticks in the comments.

USB Agent is a portable software program that provides this functionality. It requires some manual preparation before it will execute the programs. This should not take longer than a few minutes the most though. The most important step in the process is the creation of a new file on the USB device that has to be named usbagent.inf. The following information need to be added to the file after its creation (with a text editor):

[usbagent]
ON=start-app.exe
OFF=stop-app.exe

where start-app.exe and stop-app.exe need to be replaced with executables or batch files that the user wants to execute if the USB device is connected and disconnected. The executables and batch files can be stored on the USB device by using the format

ON=%basepath%\start-app.exe

where %basepath%\ is pointing to the root folder of the USB device.

USB Agent comes with an option to mount True Crypt containers that are stored on USB devices. This can be a handy option to automate the mounting of the encrypted container. The portable software is available at the developer’s German website. A link to Google Translate is listed at the top of the page to translate the page into a different language. The program itself is available in English and German and compatible with Windows 2000 and newer Microsoft operating system including Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008.

Existing rules can be modified or removed and new rules added. Supported are file and folders names plus the wildcard. It is theoretically possible to clean all files that are stored on USB flash drives by adding a *.* rule. This could be interesting for users who have to clean a lot of USB flash drives or want to work with empty drives on a specific computer system.

The software program will run hidden and cleanup connected USB flash drives automatically. These settings can be changed in the options of the program so that a confirmation is required before the data is deleted on connected USB flash drives.

USB Drive Fresher is a free software program for the Windows operating system. It is available for download at the developer’s website. Supported operating systems are Windows XP, Windows Vista and several other Microsoft operating system. It is likely that the program will also run under Windows 7.

Remove VirtualBox OSE

This is the easiest part of the tutorial. All you need to do is open up a terminal window and issue the command:

sudo apt-get autoremove virtualbox-ose

Once the OSE version has been removed it is time to install the closed source version of VirtualBox.

Installing closed source VirtualBox

The first thing to do is to add the proper sources to your /etc/apt/sources.list file. Open up that file, with your favorite editor, and add the following line to the end of that file:

deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian jaunty non-free

Now save the VirtualBox repository key on your machine (for the sake of simplicity place it in ~/Downloads) and issue the following command:

sudo apt-key add ~/Downloads/sun_vbox.asc

which will add the repo key to your system. Before you run the install update apt with the command:

sudo apt-get update

Now you can install the closed source version of VirtualBox with the command:

sudo apt-get install virtualbox-2.2

During the installation you will also have to OK the compilation of the proper kernel module. If you do not do this you may not be able to create any VMs.

The last step for the installation is to add your user to the vboxusers group. Do this with the following command:

sudo gpasswd -a USERNAME vboxusers

Where USERNAME is your login. You will be prompted for your username.

Configure USB

Now it’s time to configure the system to allow USB support. You have to get the user ID of the vboxusers group. To do this issue the following command:

grep vboxusers /etc/group

which will report something like:

vboxusers:x:123:

What you need to now do is add a line to the /etc/fstab file. This line will be (if we stick with the user ID report you see above):

none /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=123,devmode=664 0 0

With that file saved you are ready to reboot and start up VirtualBox with USB support.

Final thoughts

There are a lot of reasons why you would want to have USB support added to VirtualBox. For those iPhone owners out there it will give you a means to administer your phone without having to have a separate machine (or dual boot) in order to do so. This also greatly expands the capabilities of VirtualBox. The only downfall is you are giving up the open source version in order to gain USB support. For many this will be a worth wile trade-off. For others, giving over to closed sourced software isn’t worth having USB support. It would be nice, however, if Sun would open source the USB supported version.

This all occurred to me when I recently bought my Palm Pre. After buying the device and returning to the car, I expected to use the same car charger I used for my previous Blackberry Curve to charge my new device. But when I opened the USB 2.0 jack I found out I was out of luck. So on my way to South Carolina I had to stop by a Sprint store and shell out nearly $30 for a charger. Why couldn’t Blackberry, Palm, Apple and Samsung agree to use the same type of charger?

That might have been one case, but it’s not the first, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who gets frustrated when they have to buy a million and one variations of the same cable to do the same damn thing. I’m not saying we have to compromise performance, but just like all (well almost all) cell phone manufacturers have agreed to use either miniSD or microSD in their devices, it’s the same thing that should be done to stuff like headphone jacks chargers and better yet accessories.

I have no idea what Google and HTC were thinking when they didn’t equip a standard 3.5mm jack on the G1. Or why do we need to have ‘Apple Certified’ accessories for our iPhone’s. Yes I know the answer, its just a way for these companies to make more money even after they sell a device, because since Apple and Sony have certified accessories for their iPod and PSP line (respectively), you’ll notice that they will void your warranty if they can prove you used an accessory that was not approved by them And of course the certified accessories are more expensive cause the manufacturers are going to transfer their licensing fees to the consumer.

Thankfully there has been progress especially with Bluetooth, FireWire, CF card, eSATA and of course the indispensable Universal Serial Bus. I’m sure it’s going to take a while before I’m able to transfer my Palm Pre battery to my Motorola Q or worse notebook, or use the same charger I have plugged into my notebook for charging my cellphone, but at least some progress is here. Will ya speed it up though?

What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments below.

SuperSpeed USB, which was demonstrated for the first time in 2007 will advance the serial bus standard once again. Transfer speeds have been raised to a speed of 5 Gbit / s which improves data transfer speeds tremendously. To copy a 25 Gigabyte file USB 1.0 needed 9.03h, USB 2.0 13.09 minutes and USB 3.0 1.10 minutes. USB 3.0 receptacles are backwards compatible with USB 2.0 device plugs which basically means that computer users can still connect their USB 2.0 or USB 1.0 devices into a computer system supporting USB 3.0.

Another interesting addition to USB 3.0 are power saving features which were especially designed for mobile devices. Packet traffic is no longer being broadcasted to the USB device which reduces its power usage. Additional power saving features like idle, sleep and suspend states have been added to USB 3.0 as well. A device entering sleep mode will practically be left alone by USB 3.0 Hosts until itself initiates a device mode change. The power specs have been increased on the other hand to be able to provide devices (like external hard drives) with additional power for their operation.

First devices that make use of USB 3.0 are expected in 2009 but the main push towards USB 3.0 is expected to begin in 2010.

The Windows operating system has a Registry setting that can add USB write protection to a computer system. It is like a switch that can be enabled to make use of the write protection or disabled to allow write processes.

Users who experience problems writing to USB devices might want to take a look at this setting as well if they have the proper rights to do so to see if it is the cause for their difficulties.

Start by opening the run dialog box with the keyboard shortcut [Windows R]. Type [regedit] and hit [enter]. This should open the Windows Registry editor.

Navigate to the following Registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\

Look at the sub-keys and see if a key named StorageDevicePolicies is listed. If it is skip this paragraph and read the next. If it is not create the key by right-clicking Control and selecting New > Key

See if there is an entry named WriteProtect. It can be easily created if it is not present by right-clicking in the right window and selecting New > DWord from the menu. The following values are allowed for this entry:

• 0 – This will allow write processes on USB Flash Drives
• 1- This will block write processes on USB Flash Drives.

An alternative would be to delete the Registry key WriteProtect completely to enable both read and write processes. A restart or log off is required before the changes take effect.